“I am the ONLY female being held in a male prison here in New Jersey all because I am transgender,” Gia Valentina told Truthout. In January 2026, after years of requesting the procedure, Valentina had vaginoplasty, a gender-affirming surgery that creates a vagina and vulva. She was hoping that the procedure would allow her to be moved to Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, New Jersey’s sole…
Source
The Central California Women’s Facility, the nation’s largest women’s prison, is in Chowchilla, where temperatures reached past 90 degrees by the second week of May. The prison lacks air conditioning or any facility-wide cooling system, turning cells into saunas. “I dread going to my groups at night because we have to wait forever at the gates and we cannot bring water with us. We can’t take…
Source
One year after the Trump administration deployed thousands of federal agents to Los Angeles to arrest and detain people, immigrant rights activists are cautiously optimistic about the success of their organizing efforts. Although arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Southern California have dramatically dropped, organizers expect them to ramp up again in the future.
Source
The University of California (UC) is circulating its first-ever systemwide framework governing tribal access, co-stewardship, and land-use agreements across 80,000 acres of UC-managed land. The framework was developed by UC Tribal Lands Workgroup, composed entirely of UC staff with no Tribal government representatives, and Tribal advisory bodies were only invited to review the document after it…
Source
“Political retribution, plain and simple,” was how US Sen. Alex Padilla described an announcement by Vice President JD Vance late Wednesday regarding the White House’s decision to withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursement payments to California. Vance and Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, claimed the state’s Medicaid records have generated “red…
Source
Kwaneta Harris is one of the thousands of Americans charged with supporting both her aging parent and her own children. Her mother is in her early 70s. She also has three children; the youngest is finishing high school. Harris is also incarcerated, which means that she relies on phone calls and electronic messages to stay on top of family responsibilities. Each month, she spends over $400 on…
Source